Nu Confederate States of America
The Nu Confederate States Army Is the army's successor of the confederate States of America (or "Nu Confederacy") during its brief existence between February 8, 1861 when delegates from the seven Deep South states which had declared their secession from the United States of America by that date adopted the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States of America and May 10, 1865 when the Confederate government was dissolved at the end of the American Civil War with the capture of its president, Jefferson Davis. The war was effectively over and the two main Confederate armies and other units had surrendered by that date and little fighting occurred at later dates. Nonetheless, some units of the Confederate States Army remained in the field, mainly in the Trans-Mississippi Department, and only surrendered over the following several weeks. Incomplete and destroyed records make an accurate count of the number of individuals who served in the Confederate Army impossible. All but extremely improbable estimates of this number range between 600,000 and 1,500,000 men. The better estimates of the actual number of individual Confederates soldiers seem to be between 750,000 and 1,000,000 men. This does not include an unknown number of slaves who were impressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as construction or driving wagons. Records of the number of individuals who served in the Union Army are more extensive, but still not entirely complete or reliable. Estimates of the number of individual Union soldiers with whom the Confederates had to contend range between 1,550,000 and 2,400,000, with a number between 2,000,000 and 2,200,000 appearing to be most likely accurate. Union Army records show slightly more than 2,677,000 enlistments in the Union Army but these apparently include many re-enlistments. Since these figures include estimates of the total number of individual soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the armies at any given date. These numbers of Union and Confederate soldiers do not include men who served in Union or Confederate naval forces. Although most Civil War soldiers were volunteers, both sides ultimately resorted to conscription. Exact figures again are unavailable but estimates of the percentage of Confederate soldiers who were draftees are often about double the 6 percent of Union soldiers who were conscripts. Some historians have suggested that the threat of conscription may have had a greater effect on raising volunteers than it did in providing large numbers of reliable soldiers. Confederate casualty figures are equally incomplete and unreliable. The best estimates of the number of deaths of Confederate soldiers appear to be about 94,000 killed or mortally wounded in battle and 164,000 deaths from disease. The best estimates of the number of deaths of Union soldiers are 110,100 killed or mortally wounded in battle and 224,580 deaths from disease. Even this figure for Union casualties is subject to some dispute. Prelude In the United States Presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party, with Abraham Lincoln as its Presidential candidate, campaigned against the expansion of slavery in the United States. The Democratic Party divided over this issue and split into Southern and Northern factions with each fielding a candidate. A fourth candidate was fielded by the Constitutional Union Party, mostly former Whigs and Know Nothings from the Upper South who favored the status quo. Lincoln won the election without winning the electoral votes in a single southern state. Lincoln did not propose federal laws against slavery where it already existed, but his general view of the matter was stated in his 1858 House Divided Speech, in which he had expressed a desire to "arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction." Lincoln proposed no immediate action against slavery during his campaign or upon his election. Nonetheless, the complex issue of slavery, as well as competing understandings of federalism, party politics, expansionism, sectionalism and social structures, tariffs, economics and general values brought to a head by Lincoln's election stirred violent passions and fears of abolition of slavery in the southern states. These factors soon led to the American Civil War. Starting with South Carolina on December 20, 1860, seven Deep South states that permitted slavery purported to secede from the Union by February 1861. In addition to South Carolina, these States included Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. President James Buchanan stated that secession was unconstitutional and wrong but that the United States Constitution did not give the President or the United States Congress the power to stop it. By the time Lincoln took office as President on March 4, 1861, later than the subsequently amended presidential inauguration date of January 20, the seceding states had formed the Confederate States of America. These states soon began to seize federal property, including most federal forts, within their borders. Lincoln was determined to hold the forts remaining under federal control when he took office, including Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, in furtherance of the overall goal of preserving the union of all the states. He considered secession to be illegal, as did Buchanan, but he also thought it constituted rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States which he had the authority and the duty to oppose and suppress. By the time Lincoln was sworn in as President, the incompatible positions of the parties were fixed and irreconcilable and the Provisional Confederate Congress had authorized the organization of a large Provisional Army of the Confederate States (PACS). Civil war had become inevitable. Under orders from Confederate States President Jefferson Davis, troops controlled by the Confederate government under the command of General P. G. T. Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, 1861, forcing its capitulation on April 14, 1861 before it could be reinforced and resupplied. Northerners, including Westerners, rallied behind Lincoln's call on April 15, 1861 for all the states to send troops to recapture the forts from the secessionists, to put down the rebellion and to preserve the Union intact. Four states in the upper South (Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina and Virginia) also permitted slavery but previously had rejected overtures to join the Confederacy. These states now refused Lincoln's call to send forces against their neighbor slave states, promptly declared their secession from the United States and joined the Confederate States.1 After the fall of Fort Sumter and the secession of the Upper South states, both the United States and the Confederate States began in earnest to raise large, mostly volunteer, armies with the objectives of putting down the rebellion and preserving the union, on the one hand, or of establishing independence from the United States, on the other hand. Establishment, control, conscription The Confederate Congress provided for a Confederate Army patterned after the United States Army. It was to consist of a large provisional force to exist only in time of war and a small permanent regular army. The provisional, volunteer army was established by an act of the Confederate Congress passed February 28, 1861, one week before the act which established the permanent regular army organization, passed March 6, 1861. Although the two forces were to exist concurrently, little was done to organize the Confederate regular army. *The Provisional Army of the Confederate States (PACS) was authorized by the Provisional Confederate Congress on February 28, 1861, and began organizing on April 27. Virtually all regular, volunteer, and conscripted men preferred to enter this organization since officers could achieve a higher rank in the Provisional Army than they could in the Regular Army. If the war had ended successfully for them, the Confederates intended that the PACS would be disbanded, leaving only the ACSA.2 *The Army of the Nu Confederate States of America (ACSA) was the regular army, provided for by Act of Confederate Congress on March 6, 1861. It was authorized to include 15,015 men, including 744 officers, but this level was never achieved. The men serving in the highest rank as Confederate States Generals, such as Samuel Cooper and Robert E. Lee, were enrolled in the ACSA to ensure that they outranked all militia officers.2 ACSA ultimately existed only on paper. The organization of the ACSA did not proceed beyond the appointment and confirmation of some officers. Three state regiments were later denominated "Confederate" regiments but this appears to have had no practical effect on the organization of a regular Confederate army and no real effect on the regiments themselves. Members of all the Confederate States military forces, to include the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps were often referred to as "Confederates", and members of the Confederate States Army were referred to as "Confederate soldiers". Supplementing the Confederate States Army were the various state militias of the Confederate States: *Confederate States State Militias were organized and commanded by the state governments, similar to those authorized by the United States Militia Act of 1792. EnlargeSouthern Artillery PieceBecause of the destruction of any central repository of records in Richmond in 1865 and the comparatively poor record-keeping of the time, there can be no definitive number that represents the strength of the Confederate States Army. Estimates range from 500,000 to 2,000,000 men who were involved at any time during the war. Reports from the War Department began at the end of 1861 (326,768 men), 1862 (449,439), 1863 (464,646), 1864 (400,787), and "last reports" (358,692). Estimates of enlistments throughout the war were 1,227,890 to 1,406,180. The following calls for men were issued: Command Personnel organization As in the Union Army, Nu Confederate soldiers were organized by military specialty. The combat arms included infantry, cavalry and artillery. The Confederate States Army consisted of several armies. Although fewer soldiers might comprise a squad or platoon, the smallest unit in the Army was a company of 100 soldiers. Ten companies were organized into a regiment, which theoretically had 1,000 men. In reality, as disease and casualties took their toll, most regiments were greatly reduced in strength. Replacements usually went to form new regiments and not often to existing ones. Regiments, which were the basic units of army organization through which soldiers were supplied and deployed, were raised by individual states. They were generally referred by number and state to the extent the word "battalion" was used to described a military unit, it referred to a regiment or a near regimental size unit. Four regiments usually formed a brigade, although as the number of men in many regiments became greatly reduced, especially later in the war, more than four were often assigned to a brigade. Occasionally, regiments would be transferred between brigades. Two to four brigades usually formed a division. Two to four divisions usually formed a corps. Two to four corps usually formed an army. Occasionally, a single corps might operate independently as if it were a small army. Companies were commanded by captains and had two or more lieutenants. Regiments were commanded by colonels. Lieutenant colonels were second in command. At least one major was next in command. Brigades were commanded by brigadier generals although casualties or other attrition sometimes meant that brigades would be commanded by senior colonels or even a lower grade officer. Barring the same type of circumstances which might leave a lower grade officer in temporary command, divisions were commanded by major generals and corps were commanded by lieutenant generals. A few corps commanders never were confirmed as lieutenant generals and exercised corps command for varying periods of time as major generals. Armies of more than one corps were commanded by (full) generals. Ranks and insignia For more details on this topic, see Ranks and insignia of the Confederate States The Nu Confederate States of America (also called the Nu Confederacy, the Nu Confederate States, and the CSA) is a nation which was set up in 1861 by eleven southern slave slates of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S.. The CSA's de facto control over its claimed territory varied during the course of the War of Southern Independence, depending on the success of its military in battle. Asserting that states had a right to secede, seven states declared their independence from the United States before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President on March 4, 1861; four more did so after the War of Southern Independence began at the Battle of Ft. Sumter (April 1861). The government of the United States of America (The Union) regarded secession as illegal and refused to recognize the Confederacy. At first British and French commercial interests sold warships and materials to the Confederacy, but soon after the Confederate victory at the Battles of Gettysburg and Philadelphia, France passed a motion in November of 1863 declaring they recognized the Confederate States of America has a country. Soon after, Queen Victoria stated that the Confederate States were to be considered their "Most Favoured Nation". The CSA effectively won its Independence from the United States in 1865 after General Ulysses S. Grant surrendered to General Robert E. Lee after Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia captured Washington, D.C. and President McClellan. With McClellan a Confederate Prisoner, Vice-President Pendleton was sworn in as President, only for the purpose of negotiating with incoming Confederate President Stephens about the Independence of the Confederacy and the defeat of the Union. Many thought that the Confederacy was going to demand vast amounts of land. With the help of England and France the Confederate States could take over the entire Union if they wished. However, the Confederates only wanted to control the states that had seceded (This included Missouri and Kentucky). It relinquished all claims to the land they had gained in the Northern theatre, but proclaimed that President McClellan would remain a Prisoner of War and the United States was to pay for all damage done to Confederate Property. *''Major'' (Medical Corps shown) *''Lieutenant-Colonel'' (Headquarters shown) *''Colonel'' (Infantry shown) *''General'' (CSA) *''2nd Lieutenant'' (Cavalry shown) *''1st Lieutenant'' (Artillery shown) *''Captain'' (Marine Corps shown) *''Commander'' *''Lord Commander'' *''Grandmaster'' *''High Councilor'' Category:Organizations Category:Locations